Chirp.

[cathyr19355]

Today, I opened an account on twitter.com.

Why? Because landley and fadethecat have recently done so.

I'm still trying to figure out what the point of twitter is. To my mind, it combines the annoying elements of both blogging and IMing without incorporating the good points of either. So why twitter? To have a mini-blog on your phone? Since I can read and post to my LiveJournal from my Blackberry, I still don't see the point.

But maybe I'll find a use for twitter now that I have an account. So, for now, chirp.

Comments

Out there in the social web...

[pmat.livejournal.com]

What I'm seeing from analysts studying Twitter, IM usage, etc, is an increasing trend, especially among teens and 20-somethings, to basically conduct all their social life through their cell phones. What Twitter gives you that IM doesn't is a sort of "broadcast what I'm doing". An example I saw was "Going to XXX for lunch; anybody hungry?" which resulted in 4 or 5 people who happened to be nearby gathering for lunch. A sort of "cloud" of social information, an awareness of your social group and its activities that reflects electronic closeness rather than physical.

Carried even farther, you get "gathering in the XXX lounge in SL", resulting in Second Life casual get-togethers. This is the kind of thing that happens in my office by people strolling down the hall saying "lunch?" -- which doesn't work if the people you work with are more than a 1-minute stroll away.

The challenge for us old guys seems to be, as you point out, finding ways to track many channels of information at once. We are (most of us!) reasonably good at screening our physical environment for relevant info in the total buzz; there's a good chance, for instance, that if you and I both happened to be in one of the downtown SEPTA stations at the same time we would notice each other despite the crowds and noise. It's not so different to imagine screening the information environment.

Which isn't to say I've figured out how to do it...

Re: Out there in the social web...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I screen information by being very, very, selective about what I read, when I read it, and what channels of information I use. I can scan reading material pretty fast, but I have *no* patience with weeding out wheat from tons of chaff and dreck. Which is why I don't follow a whole lot of blogs, other than my Live Journal. Yes, I'm missing a lot of interesting information--but I'm not missing information that is *vital* to me, and I'm not stressing myself out trying to read everything in the world that might conceivably be interesting.

I can understand how some people might want to use twitter to create small personal networks to make it easier to "hook up". But the fact of the matter is that I have never had a large enough social network to feel a strong interest in technology that would assist me in doing so. So maybe the "social" aspect of twitter is not just a generation thing, maybe it's not even primarily a generation thing. It may be an extrovert-type of thing.

Thanks for the comment; yours is the most interesting explanation of "what twitter is good for" that I've read so far.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[pmat.livejournal.com]

I definitely think there's an introvert/extrovert dimension to it, just as there is to who walks down the hallway looking for people to go to lunch with, and even who notices when someone walks down the hall. People vary widely in their ability to screen that kind of chaff as well.

But that's not all of it. I grew up with several siblings and I have four children. I can work or read without difficulty completely surrounded by noise, people and chaos. At the same time, if in the middle of that chaos someone says "Mom", or mentions a rare topic I'm interested in (say, Amtrak), I'll hear it and surface from my book/task to see what's going on. There seems to be an entire subculture growing up which has the same ability to pick what they want out of the electronic noise. I'm definitely not there yet, but I've also definitely observed it.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that there's an introvert/extravert dimension to how people screen information, but I find your anecdotal examples interesting. I have no problem with working around noise and picking out interesting details from it (when I was growing up the TV was on almost 24-7). That's different from deliberately trying to drink from the fire hose that is the Internet every day without making some hard decisions on what you will read, what you *might* read, at least sometimes, and what you won't read because life is too damn short.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[pmat.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, but my point is that you (and I) perceive it as different, but there's a whole growing segment that seems to perceive it as the same, just a different kind of noise to filter. I'm puzzled but fascinated.

Re: Out there in the social web...

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

I see your point, but I'm wondering how much of that difference really is generational and how much is simply personal preference.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I have certainly been adopting new information technology. I had never viewed a website before the year 2000, regularly used e-mail before then. Now, I spend several hours a day reading and answering e-mails, and I surf and blog regularly.

Personally, I have very little patience with sorting through recommendations from acquaintances that "you really have to look at this website!" because I perceive reading through enough of the site to figure out whether there's anything there I care about as drudgery. It's not that I *can't* do it, or even that I can't do it fast enough, but doing it isn't effortless or fun; it's work. This is also my problem with IMing; it's work fiddling with typing messages into a Blackberry or phone, but much less work to speak the message into a phone or touch-type it into an e-mail or blog.